Stormbringer's Thunder

The fallacy of " Special Pleading " is a form of "Moving the Goalposts" by ignoring important information, changing criteria to bolster one's position, appealing to emotions, and similar tactics. Christians and creationists have to deal with this quite a bit. F'rinstance, when I said that Bill Nye used bad science and logical fallacies when debating Ken Ham, I produced abundant supporting evidence. A critic cried, "...I have NOT studied it in detail. However, I note that it FAILS to quote anything Nye actually said at the debate with Ken Ham VERBATIM..." That's a clear example of moving the goalposts and special pleading (as well as the brilliant logical procedure of arguing from something not studied). Owlhoots like this tend to defend their logical fallacies with more fallacies, such as appeal to motive . So, how about Pluto, the ninth planet of the solar system. Oh, wait. It was disqualified, and with apparently good reasons . People d

Back in college, I was not fond of philosophy and often cut class. One day, I showed up and it was test time. Essay  test time. So I pulled out my mental shovel and piled it on and aced the test. Perhaps if we had started with theories of knowledge and presuppositions, I would have appreciated such things more. It took people like Jason Lisle and Greg Bahnsen to prompt my thinking in such areas. Are there absolutes? How do you know what you know? What is your epistemology ? Can we know things? How can we know anything? If we can't know things, then why can't we know them? We all have our starting points and use basic logic (such as the Law of Contradiction ). Atheistic worldviews tend to be arbitrary and self-refuting in nature. Skepticism (the philosophy, not the modern stripped-down definition), Empiricism, Scientism, Rationalism and more are irrational and inconsistent. We all have our ultimate starting points for our worldviews. The biblical Christian worldview is

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen A "meme" that I used on a post 1 provoked some amazingly obstreperous and arrogant comments from anti-creationists. They misused logic and presented some remarks that were saturated with hate. These were predicated on what they considered a misuse of "science", the current definition of the Big Bang. My introductory remarks in the post said that the Big Bang was an explosion, and the article that I linked in the post had did not discuss the Big Bang, it was about other explosions. But they apparently didn't bother to read that one, they wanted to rip the "anti science" of calling the Big Bang an "explosion". Well, was the Big Bang an explosion? Or, more importantly for this article, is it justified to make such a remark? Yes, definitely. First, the Big Bang is called an explosion (or inferred by words like "cataclysmic") in dictionaries 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , but some must have received the memo that t

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Disclaimer: I do not endorse all opinions on all sites found in supporting links. This article is another of those times when several things came together for me that had been in the works for a while. I think God does that, just brings things together like that. The Arabic letter that begins their word for Nazarine has become a social media event. Moslems are using it to mark the homes of Christians in Iraq (if there are any left there now), which is reminiscent of the way Nazis marked property belong to Jews. People are using this symbol and variations on it in social media to express solidarity 1 . However, this is not anything new or unusual. Persecution of Christians is happening worldwide, especially in atheist and Moslem countries. There are ministries dedicated to spreading information and giving support to the persecuted Christians 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 . Some of the threat to Christians is the increased Islamization in the West, but the more current

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen  In a previous "Logic Lesson", I touched on the Argument from Silence , but I forgot that I did it! Diddly dur hay. Anyway, this is a more complete treatment. Arguments from silence, like other fallacies, have some clear-cut examples that are easily identifiable. The basic form is that if someone does not answer a question or give a response, it is taken as confirmation that the other person is right. Unfortunately, I do not have screenshots of one of my favorite examples. An atheopath on Twitter was attacking me for something or other, and I had better things to do (such as watching television). When I came back to Twitter, I realized that I had lost a "debate". The guy had been firing of questions and comments. Because he did not get responses from me, he declared victory for himself — I lost a debate that I did not know I had! Here is another one. It was posted in a forum, and I found out that it was e-mailed to me from a spammer-stal

— Cowboy Bob Sorensen  The simple answer to the question of why atheists cannot find God is that they really do not want to find him. However, that raises several other questions and issues. Many times, atheists claim to have rejected belief in God because of reason (as if theists somehow were automatically irrational because of their beliefs, which is a logical fallacy right there, and many atheists frequently demonstrate a grasp of basic logic). If they had used some of the logic they claim to like, they would be confronted with some problems that they cannot escape.  Atheists cannot account for logic itself , and they are unable to answer the question of existence . Although some think that evolution solves some problems and helps them become intellectually fulfilled, evolution is a failure. Materialists have attempted to scientifically locate a place for free will and the soul in the brain , and they try but fail to account for morality through evolution . The truth is tha

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Because humans are complicated beings, we respond to a number of different stimuli. Some are at very basic reflex and chemistry levels, such as "fight or flight". At the other end of the spectrum, we can intelligently consider various pieces of information and arrive at reasonable conclusions. Somewhere in the middle is the complication of emotions. Although they can respond to logic when recognized and a decision is made to bring them under control, they often arise unbidden. People have been "thinking" through their emotions for a very long time; I believe it is worse now than it used to be. There are people who want to manipulate others through emotions (whether deliberately or intentionally) , and we need to be on guard against such tactics. That is one reason I wrote a series about common logical fallacies . By recognizing fallacies and the way so many are based on appeals to emotions , we are less likely to fall for tricks, and can